So we got asked: How do you come up with these ideas?

Erm…well, honestly we aren’t 100% sure – it just kind of happens. Sometimes the lightbulb dings in minutes, other times it takes weeks of horrible self-doubt where you consider giving it all up and retraining as an accountant.

But to try and give some structure to it we Googled it and in his own words we ‘copied, transformed and combined’ the thinking of Kirby Kerguson with our own.

(as there is no such thing a new idea)

According to Ferguson and us (he actually ‘copied & transformed’ much of his thinking from James Webb Young). The idea will come from your subconscious mind but you need to provide, through your conscious mind, all the information and structure it needs to come up with the right idea(s).

1.Create a structure to ideate in: This isn’t a room filled with beanbags but rather find clearly set out the parameters to research / ideate within, i.e. the interests of 89yr old women living in Manchester

2.Become an Octogenarian Mancunian: learn, read, watch, listen, talk…do everything you possible can to understand that audience / subject of the structure you have created. This is the most important part the more you can feed your subconscious mind the greater chance you have of it creating an idea that fits the brief

3.Organise what you found: Filter through everything you have found, dissecting and analysing them. Grouping them into what is useful for the brief, which bits help to answer it, are there recurring thoughts and themes…

4.Tea / Pub time: Your work here is done my friend. It’s now up to your subconscious mind to mull everything over and find the solution, so go off and do something else / think about something else and at some-point your subconscious mind will kick in and the idea to pop up. Just remember to write it down when it does.

And that’s it. Simple.

However if the lightbulb moment doesn’t happen it’s probably that you didn’t create the right boundaries in phase one, so go back and make the area you are investigating either smaller or larger.